2022 Solo Exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York

Exhibition Review By SERENA LEE

Keith Tyson “Drawings and Paintings” at Hauser & Wirth Gallery 542 W 22nd Street. On view till April 2nd.

Still-life in the Digital Age

In this ongoing series of flowers, an avenue of exploring different modes of paintings, Keith Tyson experiments with the role of technology through traditional motifs of flowers. Tyson is interested in exploring the complexities of the surrounding world in relation to the information system and technology and the artist’s role in representing it.

 

Still Life Floating in Space

Keith Tyson
2020
Oil on aluminum
183 x 137 x 2.2 cm / 72 x 53 7/8 x 7/8 in
© Keith Tyson
Photo: Peter Mallet

 

 

Made in social isolation, the painting depicts the way of creating beauty and thinking about technology in relation to it as an encroachment on the traditional ideal of beauty, the delicate flowers. The flowers symbolic of the generative system of organs being encroached by the complex and interconnected existence of technology convey the message regarding the evolution of the universe from the Dutch period to the 21^st Century.

 

 

8 Bit Still Life

Keith Tyson

2019

Oil on aluminum

183 x 137 x 2.2 cm / 72 x 53 7/8 x 7/8 in

 

 

The exhibition is truly inter-disciplinary as he is a polymath who draws on sources from philosophy, science, mathematics, and politic into creating artworks that the viewers absorb. Each flower painting is a different and new interpretation of the relationship between still-life and technology in the context of today’s information age.

 

Still Life Connecting Worlds Without End

Keith Tyson

2021

Oil on canvas

183 x 137 x 2.6 cm / 72 x 53 7/8 x 1 in

 

 

 

The next painting on display is the pixelated low-resolution image of the flower that is zoomed in. Computers, coding, and math have always been an inextricable element of Tyson’s life with him taking part in building ‘Art Machine’ early in the 1990s that created algorithm-generated combinations of words and ideas, which Tyson interpreted to create the physical painting. The meaning of painting to Tyson is that it is a “programmable material,” which he would contextualize with various scientific, social, and aesthetic influences.

 

These series of paintings are unique in and of themselves, each occupying its own universe without any relationship to the one before and after, which leads to the next painting on display with black circles and painted flowers on it that create some sort of randomness. Unlike the two previous paintings, this one, in particular, is arguably created for purely aesthetic purposes in the absence of any social messages conveyed to the viewers from the artist’s end.

 

 

Still Life with No Sense of Self

Keith Tyson

2021

Oil on canvas

183 x 137 x 2.6 cm / 72 x 53 7/8 x 1 in

 

 

 

The recipient of the Turner prize in 2002, Keith Tyson is one of the blue-chip artists represented by the reputable Hauser & Wirth gallery on the 22^nd  Street New York. In addition to the flower paintings, the series in the second room are investigative of the time when the ipads came around in grid-like formation. The broad and diverse range of contemporary artworks showcases his 30-year career defined by the generative processes in contemporary figurative paintings. The museum quality exhibition currently held on the ground floor of the gallery is an interesting exploration of the subject of a painting flower and the content which literally can be anything with each painting a universe in the context of technological advancement.

 

 

 

 

 

About Serena Lee

Ⓒ Serena Lee is an art advisor and curator. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Cornell University and is a candidate for a Master’s Degree in Art Business.

   @sserenaleee